CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.

The British expression "noise stroke gesture" (in American parlance, "noise slash gesture" or "noise/gesture") refers to the intriguing fact
that some vocal expressions seem to call for an accompanying hand
gesture. Take, for example, Pfft! No matter what its intended meaning, it virtually demands to be echoed in sign language.

Someone pretends to moisten a finger,
then touches it briefly to her posterior and mimes the effect of the
finger "sizzling" -- to the accompaniment of a "Tsss"
vocalization. And how about the triumphant "Yessss!" that
is always(?) accompanied by body language? Or Fonzie's "Ayyyy"
with thumb extended? Or the one where someone acknowledges
someone else by briefly pointing at him/her while making a one- or
two-syllable clicking sound (reminiscent of a shutter-release)?

Have you noticed a noise/gesture in print? Please share!

(For a variety of surprising definitions of noises like pfft, check out my Dictionary of All-Consonant Words at OneLetterWords.com.)

We can verify that p'fft is an appropriate response to "blankety-blank nonsense" (as noted on the first page of Budget Weddings For Dummies). Relatedly, Wodehouse has written: "He had a dim sort of idea that it began with an F or a G, but beyond that his mind was a blank" (The Small Bachelor).

But did you know that p'fft comes down to us from an ancient Chinese expression meaning, "May your children and grandchildren never murmur as they carry out the careful and brilliant virtue of their predecessors"?

It's commonly assumed that the apostrophe in p'fft stands for an f, the concept being that an f-too-many is overwhelming. Indeed, Wodehouse notes: "You could have knocked me down with a f" (Right Ho, Jeeves). Yet the truth is more interesting. The apostrophe actually stands for a hyphen, swept upwards as it were by the breath of the expression.